Project 0 2x Demo Released

[iatneH]

Thanks for the comments and criticisms, they have been duly noted Yes, I do happen to post a lot at shmups.com also.

I'll see what I can address here (there were a lot of good points so I might miss something)

I am quite a newbie programmer still, there are a good deal of floating-point operations and divisions going on which I believe are the main hits to framerate. The code could probably be cleaned up, but I made a big mess with my newbie skills :\ Because of this, I don't really know how I can make arrow-shaped bullets efficiently. Aiming and orientation (some copters orient to face your location) are done with expensive FP/division ops, so I'd like to avoid having to orient the bullets too.

Reversing the screen orientation to use ABXY... I never thought of that at all! It sounds like a good idea that I could try, but it would be a lot of work since all of the scrolling and movement and hardcoded for the current orientation (naturally, since any other orientation hadn't occurred to me). Maybe I could use the current positions and just write a function to convert everything after all the initial placements are worked out?

Justron and I have discussed setting an upper limit for credits, but it would only be useful for encouraging skilled play if the level design were actually good enough for competitive score play (which it isn't - You can see I obviously play games more than I make them!) This is also related to the chain system... There's no way I'll be able to match the depth of DDP of course, I admit the level design is a bit loose. The enemy placements are somewhat based on Ketsui, which has a completely different chain mechanism too (which I didn't know how to implement, especially the part about vacuuming up point boxes, haha).

Bomb explosion: I don't know how to make transparencies..! Yet I don't want the blasts to be completely opaque either otherwise it would be hard to tell what is being damaged by the blast... Justron made this sprite, which I thought is already 100 times better than the one I made. You'll have to try to imagine that

Powerups: These and extra bomb items... I might do them later. I actually also thought about doing a hold-fire & tap-fire (similar to DonPachi, would also be required for the Ketsui-style scoring gimmick), but I couldn't think of how to implement it, especially animating the laser. These will make huge changes to the gameplay.

The stage 2 boss second form IS easy. But it's pretty. So you guys want to die, eh? I'll see what I can do to make it more evil Regarding durability: Hmm... I could reduce the main body's life by a bit. But I also want you guys to experience the 2nd form for a little while. Especially for the second boss, the rear plates are a bit difficult to hit by themselves. By the time you blow them all out, the boss is nearly dead. Now this might be a problem with my code itself, I could possibly adjust the main body's hitbox a bit...

Anyway, thank you all again and keep playing! Hope it didn't sound like I was trying to weasel my way out of fixing things...

edit: I just realised that in my excitement I forgot to modify the readme file to say that a demo was actually released. It's now on the website in my first post, if anybody actually wants to download it. I just added one sentence.

 

[STTrife]

its bullet hell or "maniac bullet curtain" as the author put it. its meant to have a crazy amount of bullets at pretty much all times. the way it is now its hard but not impossible. games like this can be much harder. and why would you want the hitbox to be bigger if the game is already too hard for you. the small hitbox is what usually saves you in these games.

not trying to put down your suggestions just that i don't think you understand the style the game is and that it is the way it is intentionally.

well what I meant is that it's not clear to me how to dodge the bullets... in my opionion it would be better to have a more 'realistic' bounding box (bigger) on the plane (because: where the hell is the bounding box now??? in the middle, front, back? I dunno ), and to compensate the hardness: make less bullets. The hardness of the game you get then could be the same as now, but at least then it's clear to me which bullet hits me when I die...

and about the style of the game: I already commented that I understood the 'coolness' of the many bullets, I just say: at least have one or two easy levels to get into the game... that's just basic gameplay rules to make it easier to start playing the game. The concept of making a game very hard from the beginning is in my opionion only usefull for coinbox machines: they need to earn money from the game.

 

[DaveC]

Cool demo.

The graphics seem kind of cartoony at the monent. The 3/4 perspective thing doesn't work for me though. I mean you are supposed to be looking top down as that is the way the movement of the ships are etc. Yet you see this psuedo 3D from the front view of buildings etc and it really doesn't match. Maybe move to more top down view like Raiden as that is how the game moves?

 

[Justron]

Cool demo.

The graphics seem kind of cartoony at the monent. The 3/4 perspective thing doesn't work for me though. I mean you are supposed to be looking top down as that is the way the movement of the ships are etc. Yet you see this psuedo 3D from the front view of buildings etc and it really doesn't match. Maybe move to more top down view like Raiden as that is how the game moves?

Ouch... Ha ha... Dave if you want me to spend 8-12 hours redrawing each level from a different perspective, my going rate is $12 an hour!

In all seriousness, thanks for the feedback, but a huge change like that is unlikely. It's the way iatneH designed it, and he's the designer. If you have more specific feedback, like "the trees look like broccoli, gross!" That sort of thing I CAN do something about, it's still a bit of work, but as you know it's not the final product.


Thanks for the feedback everyone! From what I've read so far, the most important things to people are:
- a continue limitation, to add a sense of challenge to play
- more competative scoring system
- tweaking of the boss health
- stuff to collect (doesn't seem to matter if it's powerups, bombs, lives, or just extra points)
- more obvious hitbox on the helicopter
- better looking bomb

Things no one's complained about:
- The actual art of the sprites or background (except a few things)
- Toughness of regular enemies
- Sound Effects
- Title Screen
- Controls
- Power of bombs

For those who want a greater challenge, you can challenge yourself! It's not necessarily up to us to limit your continues, how many bombs you use, etc. These are restrictions you can set on yourself. If we put in all these limitations and made the game super hard, we'd lose a large part of playership through satisfying a small portion of it. I know you can continue forever, but that doesn't make you awesome at Project Zero! (I am not awesome at Project Zero)

 

[STTrife]

I think it's more likely you'll lose players if you NOT remove the unlimited lives (at least me).
Keep up the good work

 

[jbrodack]

at least give us an option to have limited continues. there is no sense of wanting to not have to continue if you always get the continue screen and can always throw in another credit. limited continues is a must if the game is to be intense and fun instead of easy and aimless.

everything else is great and you know what you're doing but that one decision just makes no sense to me. ive only seen that kind of thing in arcade games or some neo geo home games that have unlimited continues and i just think it has no place outside of an arcade.

 

[Mr.Jabberwocky]

Ouch... Ha ha... Dave if you want me to spend 8-12 hours redrawing each level from a different perspective, my going rate is $12 an hour!

$12 an hour. You are very reasonable. You should be asking for more, for work of that quality. Epecially when you consider you could have made 20-30 joystick caps in that time and sold each one for $12 a few weeks back.(and probably been made a guru for it :blink: )
I like the isometric perspective and do not see what he means by your artwork being cartoon-like, for what it is worth.
That kind of post is precisely why DaveC is the only person on my ignore list.

 

[Epicenter]

Ouch... Ha ha... Dave if you want me to spend 8-12 hours redrawing each level from a different perspective, my going rate is $12 an hour!

$12 an hour. You are very reasonable. You should be asking for more, for work of that quality. Epecially when you consider you could have made 20-30 joystick caps in that time and sold each one for $12 a few weeks back.(and probably been made a guru for it :blink: )
I like the isometric perspective and do not see what he means by your artwork being cartoon-like, for what it is worth.
That kind of post is precisely why DaveC is the only person on my ignore list.

No, no, see, if it has a cartoonlike style e.g. the 'cel shaded' appearance of the backgrounds, they have no worth and are terrible. If it's not photorealistic, it's not worth existing. That's why no one wants to play emulators on the GP2X. </extremesarcasm>

 

[Willei]

I'll throw in some more comments now I've played it some more. I forget to mention before, but I think that the enemy durabilty is pretty much spot on. The mix between cannon fodder and more dangerous enemies is pretty good. With regards to the hitbox, I don't mind it so much but it might make more sense to make it on the rotor blades of the player craft like in Under Defeat. It seems a little far back in the ship considering the player sprite.

The bomb invulnerability seems to last a bit too long as well. I'd rather bullets were prevented from coming out for the duration of the bomb instead of the overly generous immunity period. It's a fairly minor point for me though, scoring and framerate are the most important things for consideration at the moment. To be honest, I'm not sure if I'm really giving good suggestions or pointing out the ways in which the game differs from Dodonpachi! :s

I noticed a little bug (maybe it was intentional, Mushihimesama style) in that you can hold down both the fire buttons at the top and bottom of the GP2X and get twice the firing rate.


Edit, one thing I forgot about was the way enemies shoot as they leave the screen! Specifically, I think it's a bit mean for the volley of large aircraft on the first level to shoot as they drop off the bottom of the screen if you haven't been able to shoot them down - it might be an idea if things stop shooting about 3/4 the length of the screen down. It's not that bad or anything, but it is the first level afterall!

 

[Justron]

$12 an hour. You are very reasonable. You should be asking for more, for work of that quality...

Thanks, I know $12 an hour is unreasonable for this sort of work, but that's how much I make at my day job, so apparently my time is only worth $12. [/overworkedandunderpaid]

I noticed a little bug (maybe it was intentional, Mushihimesama style) in that you can hold down both the fire buttons at the top and bottom of the GP2X and get twice the firing rate.

That's hilarious! I didn't find that one, not sure if it's intentional at all. Does it add anything to gameplay? It must be hard to still control and do that at the same time. Good find!

 

[iatneH]

I didn't know about that exact thing with holding down both firing buttons, but I did know that I could achieve a higher firing rate by tapping the fire button as quickly as I could.
Now I wonder if you could nuke the bosses by rapid tapping both fire buttons (and flying forwards). I'll have to get around to fixing that

The backgrounds will be left as they are. The current perspective is more or less how they looked in Ketsui, although I suspect only a handful of lucky people here have played it... Not even Justron himself has played it
And I paid him nothing. You should have seen the backgrounds I made before I got Justron's help. I think I got a good deal here

I thought I put the hitbox in the very centre of the rotor blades, but I'll have to check again. Another thing that could be causing sloppy hit detection is the way I've implemented hit detection. A bullet travels an integer (x,y) distance each frame, right now I'm only checking whether a bullet is inside the hitbox on any given frame, but not whether it has passed through the hitbox between two frames (but was outside on both frames). So, it's quite inaccurate, as it *might* be possible for very fast bullets to go right through your ship if you are flying towards the bullet... I compensated with a larger bounding box, but the result is that it's easier to die from slow bullets than it is from fast ones; the the effect is the hitbox seems larger for slow bullets and smaller for fast ones.

Willei brings up a very good point that I was also concerned about, the enemies firing from the bottom of the screen. This is something I can certainly change probably with just a single additional if statement for each enemy each frame, so performance shouldn't be affected greatly.
Although you haven't mentioned this, I could think about a "blanking distance" for ground enemies, but again I don't know how to calculate distances efficiently. How did Seibu Kaihatsu do it on their old Raiden hardware???

 

[Willei]

Hmm, I'd thought about point blanking briefly but it doesn't really come up in the two level demo. I think the common way to handle it is for small ground based enemies to avoid point blanking but for larger ones to just fire regardless of player position. In the first two levels all the small ground enemies are way up the screen, and only the big ones can really get close to you. I've got no idea how Ketsui handles it (played it a small handful of times when I very rarely get the chance, the only cab in the UK is half the country away...) but the proximity bonus might affect the balancing of a point blank rule? Dunno really...

I might be mistaken about the hitbox, but it feels like it's closer to the back of the ship. It's entirely likely that it's just the framerate that's confusing me there though. As for the rapid fire with two buttons, it doesn't seem to engage every time so I don't think you'd get a chance to work on your Track and Field skills! There's a certain charm to making yourself safe for a second or two and sacrificing mobility to deliver some "full power for short period of time only", but I'm not sure it should stay.

 

[OMars]

You know what would be a great item to pickup-something that allows you to put a "wind" in one direction, causing all enemies to miss their shots, and forcing you to aim your shot to work with the wind in order to hit an enemy...just an idea. Don't feel like I am forcing you, I am just OMars...... h34r:

 

[Justron]

You know what would be a great item to pickup-something that allows you to put a "wind" in one direction, causing all enemies to miss their shots, and forcing you to aim your shot to work with the wind in order to hit an enemy...just an idea. Don't feel like I am forcing you, I am just OMars...... h34r:

I think that's actually a really cool idea, but probably not suited for this particular project. That would be a very interesting dynamic I've never seen before in a shmup, but I'm not a connoisseur. I just like 'em.

 

[OMars]

You know what would be a great item to pickup-something that allows you to put a "wind" in one direction, causing all enemies to miss their shots, and forcing you to aim your shot to work with the wind in order to hit an enemy...just an idea. Don't feel like I am forcing you, I am just OMars...... h34r:

I think that's actually a really cool idea, but probably not suited for this particular project. That would be a very interesting dynamic I've never seen before in a shmup, but I'm not a connoisseur. I just like 'em.

No, I understand. Just keep working on this, it's great!

 

[DaveC]

$12 an hour. You are very reasonable. You should be asking for more, for work of that quality. Epecially when you consider you could have made 20-30 joystick caps in that time and sold each one for $12 a few weeks back.(and probably been made a guru for it :blink: )
I like the isometric perspective and do not see what he means by your artwork being cartoon-like, for what it is worth.
That kind of post is precisely why DaveC is the only person on my ignore list.

You are such a fucking dick.

The guys ask for feedback, some is given and you bitch and flame and go off with insults because you don't agree with it.. Go fuck yourself you pompous arrogant ass.

 

[Epicenter]

$12 an hour. You are very reasonable. You should be asking for more, for work of that quality. Epecially when you consider you could have made 20-30 joystick caps in that time and sold each one for $12 a few weeks back.(and probably been made a guru for it :blink: )
I like the isometric perspective and do not see what he means by your artwork being cartoon-like, for what it is worth.
That kind of post is precisely why DaveC is the only person on my ignore list.

You are such a fucking dick.

The guys ask for feedback, some is given and you bitch and flame and go off with insults because you don't agree with it.. Go fuck yourself you pompous arrogant ass.

No, he got upset with you because you offered no constructive criticism in any sense and basically just shot down the whole game. Your list of problems made it sound like he released a GP2X port of something he scraped off his boot. You could be a hell of a lot more encouraging than that. You deserved what Mr.Jabberwocky said to you, and your reply makes it only more apparent why.

 

[jimmyslam]

The graphics are not that bad, they are very basci that is all. They need to be a bit better. The way you see them is correct. Look aero fighters , they are like that. Anyway, just everyone relax please? Aye you getting worst with the summer? In that case have a few icecreams come on chill out.

Good demo indeed.

How long have you been working (programming) with this?

 

[STTrife]

In my opionion there is nothing wrong with the graphics. Maybe if you really really take a close look you'll find some stuff that can be done better, but when you are playing the game you'll not notice it.
Keep it up!
I'd rather see improvements in gameplay (no more limitless continues) then better graphics just more graphics and more levels is better way to spent your time!

 

[winapa]

There's nothing wrong with the graphics, or anything else for that matter. I downloaded the demo, and had a play with it, and enjoyed it...If I was to make a comment I would say that I wasn't keen on the rotated screen. But here's the thing....Its not my place, okay we were asked for comments and some gave them. But unless you are writing this or paying for it or directing it or have even the slightest involvment whatsoever, then if you don't like the answer...Tough.

Its likely that iatneH and Justron spent a long time just getting things the way THEY liked them, the way THEY thought was best, and the way THEY enjoyed it. If no-one else likes it, then they won't play it...you aren't paying for it so whats the problem.

If I was to turn round to you and say I didn't like the colour of your car, would you change it? Would you fuck, you'd tell me to piss off because ITS NOT MY PLACE TO TELL YOU.

As far as i'm concerned guys, its great work up to now, but get it the way you like it.